As additional new cases appear daily, the event will go down in infamy
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, is the latest Republican official to test positive for Covid-19, which was revealed Monday, October 5, 2020 on her Twitter page. Two of her deputies, Karolina Keavitt, assistant press secretary and Chad Gilmartin, principal assistant press secretary also tested positive.
The positive tests are mounting; to date, eleven people tied to Trump have contracted the virus, as well as three Republican Senators, for a total of fourteen cases.
The three US senators that have been diagnosed with coronavirus potentially threatens the plan for a desperately accelerated confirmation of Supreme Court justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett tentatively scheduled for approximately 14 days from now.
Celebrate too soon and hubris will announce your demise(?)
Ironically, it was clear to all who have seen the video of the recent celebration for Barrett, held at the Rose Garden of the White House, that arrogant people with no-masks, tightly packed together and kissing is a recipe for infection.
So, now it appears that that very event, gleefully celebrating the opportunity to shove through the right leaning jurist, might just jeopardize the nomination itself, at least until after the election. Of course, many on the list are older and the irresponsible behavior reeking of hubris may lead to a more grave outcome than the simple delay of a questionable nomination.
Senate Majority leader (Moscow) Mitch McConnell announced on Saturday, that the Senate would halt any floor action for the next two weeks, which presumably means that no votes will happen this week or next week. While any floor action will be suspended, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to meet the week of October 12 for Barrett’s confirmation hearings, unless more are infected or the cases become more serious.
Melania Trump (First Lady)
Ronna McDaniel (Republican National Committee chairwoman)
Hope Hicks (White House communications aide)
Kellyanne Conway (Former White House counselor)
Bill Stepien (Trump campaign manager)
John Jenkins (University of Notre Dame president)
Chris Christie (Former New Jersey Gov.)
Nick Luna (Director of Oval Office operations)
Karoline Leavitt (White house assistant press secretary)
In an interconnected world consensus happens fast when a new thing needs to be named
The coronavirus is, as we all know by now, properly named covid-19 or at least the novel coronavirus. Could even be the new coronavirus, which is what “novel” is meant to convey. As you also probably already know, it is not named after a Mexican beer, but rather the fact that, presumably under a microscope, the virus looks like a crown or “corona”. And the “19” in covid-19 stands for the year of discovery, 2019, not that it is the 19th pandemic or 19th strain of the virus (go now and tell Kellyanne Conway).
If you are watching an interview on the pandemic and an expert or pundit is opining they are probably an epidemiologist which is a person who studies epidemics and is a word, and a group of people, you don’t hear much about except when the whole world is in the middle of one.
As you read this you might be at home due to your state, city or county having issued a “stay-at-home order” which is a nice way of saying you are under lock-down. When you go out you will need a mask and, above all to practice social distancing. Oh, and that mask will theoretically need to be an N-95 medical grade one to protect not only others but you as well. But please don’t wear one as they are needed for medical professionals.
The N-95 is necessary because droplets coming from coughing, sneezing, breathing or even loud talking or singing (!) will be hanging in the air for many minutes. See illustration above for a graphic portrait off droplets in action.
Flattening the curve is a simple and yet complicated concept that has become part of folklore or at least our community consciousness. It refers not to stopping or conquering the virus, which is impossible, but to slowing the rate of new infections down to a tempo that is below the rate at which hospitals and government services can keep pace with the surge of new patients. Spreading the virus more slowly is the real goal of wearing masks, practicing social distancing and observing the stay-at-home orders.
What do we do during lockdown? Go shopping of course!
Also, we must all have at least a cursory understanding of the meaning of essential vs non-essential business and employment. Walmart is essential due to the huge grocery section and the much sought after paper products, but the areas where every other non-essential product are available remain open also. However, if your store looks like Walmart but has no grocery section you are non-essential.
Photo / Lynxotic
Amazon of course is the most essential business of all and it’s soon to be trillionaire owner can decide what products to favor with faster shipping and which to delay or try not to sell, even as they remain on sale. He owns our national supply chain now. but just be sure to use alcohol spray on the boxes and wait anywhere from 3 to 72 hours before opening. And when you wash your hands, which you must do many, many, many times a day be sure and sing happy birthday to yourself. Or set your timer for 20 seconds +.
Both gouging, which is a crime in many states but Amazon wants to be made into a federal crime so it can blame its individual marketplace sellers, and hoarding which everybody does, especially with paper products, are rampant and it’s just something to get used to.
After approximately 2 months, flattening the curve changes to F.U. to the Gov, as long as they are democrats
Anti-lockdown protests, which are never called anti-stay-at-home-order protests are also something to get used to. Noose imagery, nazi swastikas, calls to kill or lynch the governor and, naturally semi-automatic weapons with enough ammo cartridges to re-load at least half-a-dozen times are all ok, even inside the state capitol. Just be sure you are white. If so you will be designated as a “good person” by the guy in the White House.
We are all intimately familiar with that little town of 11 million residents in China they call Wuhan, and we know that they have both a notorious “wet-market”, Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where people occasionally also buy bats they plan to snack on, and we also know that the same little town has a, now famous lab where they had been studying coronavirus strains.
Depending on who you ask, the novel coronavirus, aka covid-19, had its origin in one of these two places and was released accidentally, or on purpose either by the chinese government or by the U.S. military and the they, or the bat eating customers and wholesalers are to blame for everything.
The coronavirus might kill you but when the pandemic is a pin prick to the largest bubble in history you will surely notice it
The outcome of all of this is still very mush uncertain, but the US government and the SBA have already issued stimulus checks, created the C.A.R.E.S. act, created programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program, The EIDL disaster loan program and beefed up unemployment payments by $600 per week, while extending the length in some cases that claims can last. This is all to combat the economic fallout from the pandemic, and, depending on who you ask is a recession or a depression and in any case is really, really bad and getting worse. This has created an unemployment spike as large as or larger than the 1930’s Great Depression peak and make the 2008 Financial Crisis look like a hiccup.
Oh, and they have spent already somewhere between $2-3 trillion dollars, not including the Federal Reserve‘s contribution to “infinite quantitative easing” and other measures. Las week the congress passed a bill for an additional $3 trillion of “stimulus” but this will change as the senate and the prez and not going to agree (not due to the size but because the “wrong” people will get the money).
A sequel to this glossary on the next chapter “post pandemic deflationary depression and words you will need to understand to survive” is in the works and will follow shortly, along with the eponymous depression itself. Cheers.
USA now at 237 Thousand Confirmed Cases and Rising
The death toll has passed 50,000 worldwide with Europe close behind the US in confirmed cases. While the increases could be partially due to accelerating testing, there is a clear pattern and the danger is unquestionable. More than 6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week in the US.
The Democratic National Convention was postponed until mid-August due to concerns that the current situation will still be an issue in July, when the Milwaukee, Wisconsin located event was originally scheduled to take place.
There was an announcement that in China, the Henan province, with 600,000 residents was placed on lock-down, indicating that the temporary “victory” in the people’s republic was prematurely declared.
The lock-down was declared in Jia county, after a local hospital had reported a number of cases. According to the government, all but a few business have been closed temporally, for an indeterminate length of time.
Authorities are implementing curfew like measure due to fears that a second wave of cases may be in the early stages.
Economic issues and business paralysis is also a continued issue worldwide, including in China, Europe and the US. The overall view is still that containment must be first and at the same time balanced with economic recovery methods, stimulus and, eventually, a resumption of business activities.
We are all gradually emerging from a state of shock. Even if we have no symptoms we see people saying, irresponsibly, that “eventually” somewhere between 50% and 100% will have contracted the novel coronavirus. One the other hand some of us, the brave, such as Idris Elba, who says he is still asymptomatic, choose to use this time to reflect on even bigger issues facing our planet.
What can be bigger than this pandemic? No need to look any further than the climate crisis, which up until sometime in February, was close to the top trending issue we were all very preoccupied with.
And for good reason. While the death estimates for the coronavirus are very frightening the climate crisis has the potential not only to affect or infect the lives of 100% of the world it will end it if we do not act.
Idris Elba in a publicity still from “The Mountain Between Us”
Big Problems need Big Thinkers and Brave Ideas
Along with other big thinkers, Idris Elba is on to something. Why not take this time to find ways to survive, but also put the energy we all have at our disposal into realigning our thinking towards a better way to live as a species on this planet. If it helps to see this as a message or even and attack by the much maligned and mistreated planet earth, and if that inspires us to dig deeper and, while staring into the abyss represented by the pandemic, so be it.
So much the better. Stay at home workers might be better off never going into an office high rise again. I know the planet will choke on less carbon if millions of people stop commuting. We have known that for 50 years. Software needs to grow, our ability to communicate via networked human communication systems, a.k.a. the internet, needs to improve radically and at a mind-bending pace. Why? Because, only when we change everything we do an how, can we avoid surviving something like this worldwide disease threat and then suddenly finding ourselves facing something even worse. Let’s inspire each other to dig deep and find ways to stop that scenario from happening.
In her latest instagram post, created from her Quarantine with husband Tom Hanks in Australia, Rita Wilson calls it Quarantine Stir Crazy – which is far nicer than turning into a Homicidal Maniac… but then she’s a nice and talented lady who happens to be married to Tom Hanks. While Idris Elba is writing his own Sci-fi script, and along with all the rest of us, concurrently living it – he is also spinning out extremely thoughtful, even deep, ideas while face-timing with Oprah:
“One of the upsides of this whole drama is that we are forced to think together as a race. Our world has been taking a kicking. We have damaged our world and it’s no surprise that our world is reacting to the human race.”
“It is no surprise that a virus has been created that is going to slow us down, and ultimately make us think differently about our world and ourselves. For me, that’s a stand-out thing that is really obvious. This is almost like the world’s cry out.”
“Like: ‘Hey, hey, hey – you are kicking me and what you’re doing is not good, so we will get rid of you.’ “As any organism would do, (the world) is trying to get rid of an infection, and maybe this is it for the world.”“As any organism would do, (the world) is trying to get rid of an infection, and maybe this is it for the world.”
Idris Elba, in facetime chat with Oprah while in quarantine in London
